Guest Post by NAHU’s Pat Griffey! Plus More

There’s not a cloud in the sky where we are today. Hope it’s all blue skies for you too. Today you’ll want to scroll to the end of Insurance Insider News for a very special guest post by NAHU’s Pat Griffey. Thank you, Pat!

Harvard T.H. School For Public Health Offers Live Event on Reopening Society

Anthem Blue Cross Steps Up to Ensure Vulnerable Get at least One Meal a Day

Please help get the word out: Anthem Blue Cross has expanded a recently launched home delivered meal program to address increased food insecurity and nutritional needs that are emerging amid the ongoing pandemic. Last December, Anthem Blue Cross partnered with Mom’s Meals and Project Open Hand to launch a medically tailored meal program for its Medi-Cal members in the Central Valley, Los Angeles and the Bay Area who face chronic disease and complex health challenges. During the first five months of the program, more than 37,000 custom-tailored meals were delivered to Anthem Blue Cross Medi-Cal members – food-as-medicine to improve their health. Because COVID-19 has increased referrals, Anthem Blue Cross has responded by expanding the program to make home delivered meals available to Anthem Medi-Cal members across the state and ensure that eligible members receive at least one ready-to-eat meal a day, seven days a week. Anthem Blue Cross works with health care providers, clinics, case managers, community health workers and internal staff to identify members with qualifying needs and enroll them in one of its available home-delivered meal programs. Those who have been recently hospitalized and need help while recovering, or individuals trying to control chronic conditions and lacking the nutritional resources needed to succeed, are the most likely candidates for Anthem’s home delivered meal programs. Members with questions about this benefit or other COVID relief resources should speak to their healthcare providers, contact their case managers or call the customer service number on their Anthem ID card.

Humana Leader Makes Post-Pandemic Predictions

Humana’s CEO Bruce Broussard made an appearance on CNBC’s Closing Bell explaining how he believes the pandemic will change health care. Broussard said he believes telehealth and more health services done in the home will be among permanent post-pandemic changes. Want more? Don’t miss Cal Broker’s upcoming June print magazine. It will be chock full of predictions, inspiration and survival tips!

CMS Approves ACA Changes

The Trump administration finalized regulatory changes for 2021 ACA exchanges, including a key change that insurers don’t have to count copay assistance from drug companies toward out-of-pocket cost-sharing and deductibles. For the nitty gritty go here.

Health Care Sector Hit Hard with Job Loss

Essential health care workers may be top of mind right now, but a recent report by Health Leaders reminds us that many in the health care industry are not currently working. In fact, the health care sector lost more that 1.4 million jobs in April.

The 2020 National Medicare Supplement Insurance Summit set to take place May 13-15, 2020, in Chicago will now be held June 2-4, 2021, according to the American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance the conference organizers. The conference will take place at the Schaumburg Convention Center just outside of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. The 2021 conference will include its free day for insurance agents who market Medicare and other senior insurance products. Go here for more info.

CAHU Women’s Leadership Summit Rescheduled to August

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the CAHU Women’s Leadership Summit has been postponed from March to August 5-7, 2020, at the same location, the JW Marriott in Las Vegas. We are hopeful that all current participants, and those who were recently forced to cancel, will be able to join us in August. CAHU will automatically transfer event registrations to the new dates. If for some reason you can no longer attend, please contact Korey Platt by email for additional options.If you have any questions or concerns contact info@cahu.org.

LAAHU 2020 April Annual Sales Symposium Rescheduled to July

LAAHU will postpone the April 22 Sales Symposium, AdapTech until Friday, July 17, 2020. We’ve recently learned that this event will now be virtual! More info at laahu.org.

Chicago: October 14
New York: October 26 Los Angeles: October 30
Dallas: November 17

16th Annual BenefitsPRO Broker Expo 2020 will be August 20-22

BenefitsPRO Broker Expo 2020 has been postponed to August 20-22 in Austin, Texas. More info here.

PAT GRIFFEY GUEST POST

Beam Me Up, Scotty!Aligning “Vision 2025” for NAHU and its members

By Pat Griffey

Unless you were a Star Trek fan that opening line may not resonate with you; however, in the last two months, I have had some flashbacks to some of my favorite Star Trek episodes. Back in the day we saw into the future through a television where Captain Kirk was always quick to use this order, “Beam me up, Scotty!” to get out of a bad situation. The other time he would order Scotty to beam him up to the Starship Enterprise was at the end of the episode when their work was done, and the world was once again made “right.” It may be a while before our world is right again, but I have every confidence that it will in time. While we cannot be beamed up out of the pandemic, or undo the resulting damage, we can look around and see how prepared we were for what we are dealing with in the initial aftermath and learn a lesson or two.

We all know that hindsight is 20/20. When I rewind 10 months, I remember the day that the Board of Trustees of the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) began working on Vision 2025 for our association. Following many hours of often difficult but facilitated discussions during the summer and fall of 2019, the board identified seven major goals we felt the association needed to specifically focus on over the next 5 years. We had accepted the seismic shift that had occurred in the delivery of health insurance and healthcare in our country and wanted to put our agent association on the right path to address the community needs of our members going forward. When the dust settled in Q4, the board had identified seven major goal categories for NAHU as follows:

Changing Consumer Expectations (members and general consumers)

Mergers and Acquisitions

Changes to Member Compensation

Employer Market Issues

Technology

Major Health Policy

Organizational Recommendations

Within these seven major goal categories were placed separate sub goals, along with annual timelines and measurables for accountability. Having established these seven goals and sub-goals, the board was prepared to easily assess whether any new idea or concept that presented itself in the future, would fit into our vision for NAHU and its members. One of the strengths of Vision 2025 is that each goal is represented by separate individual teams who possess important skill sets, experience and interests, as well as a goal champion represented by a member of NAHU board. This enables the board to easily oversee and monitor the progress for each goal.

At this point I would now ask the reader to think about the 2020 Pandemic as it relates to the goals listed above. It is easy to see that as a result of our Vision 2025 planning, the board was much better positioned to begin to quickly address some important issues as they occurred and are yet to come. Little did we know 10 months ago, just how important the work we were doing was going to be at the beginning of 2020. Since Vision 2025 is a living breathing document, we can also easily adjust within the sub goals as needed to address any new issues as they appear based on how it fits within our vision for NAHU.

As NAHU president, I have seen the board tackle some tough issues since I took the helm on July 1st, 2019, but none compared to what was about to happen as we turned the corner into 2020. One of the first situations was the suggestion that we build a program to assist members who have been directly and medically impacted by the virus. While NAHU already had a program to assist localized areas for natural disasters, that program was never designed to handle a pandemic affecting the entire country. Because of the work the board had done on Vision 2025, we were able to pivot and turn to Goal #1 as a changing expectation of our members. Never had we needed to address an expectation of this magnitude; but this idea fit into one of our pre-established major goals and we had a team in place that could start working on a plan to help our members. Within a relatively short period of time, the team was engaged and empowered to design a way to try to meet this need. This is just one example of how the work that was done on Vision 2025 in early 2019, provides us with a preset path to tackle a new problem or issue we face today.

Another difficult decision emerged as we saw that our Annual Convention scheduled for the end of June in Chicago, was in jeopardy but thanks to our planning within Vision 2025, we were ready. Working within Goal #5, the board had a team prepared to locate the proper technology to set up a virtual convention for our members. This team was already ahead of the game though since they had already established a new association app in Q4 (NAHU365) that will also be put to good use during our virtual convention format. Speaking of the virtual convention June 28-30, we have an amazing agenda planned and it is open to members and non-members alike. Additional information is available on the convention and registration at: https://nahu.org/events/recurring-events/2020-annual-convention

In closing, the COVID-19 battle is not over and collectively this nation has many challenges and needs ahead of us; however, the American spirit rises to the challenge on many levels. Dwight D Eisenhower was quoted as saying, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Make no mistake, addressing the issues in the 2020 Pandemic is an ongoing battle. Every day we all will make decisions we hope are the correct ones since someone’s life may very well depend on what we decide. I could not be prouder of what the members of the Board of Directors and the supporting volunteer leaders have done on behalf of NAHU and its members as we head into the next 3-5 years and prepare for what is coming. I know our planning is solid and we are prepared to take on the hard things we will be faced with. After all, the first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. NAHU has taken the hard first steps and we welcome others to join us as we move forward into the future of healthcare and health insurance in our country.

Patricia A. Griffey, Lutcf, CSA, RHU, ChHC, REBC has been a licensed agent for over 40 years with more than 20 of those years as a group benefits general agent. Today she is the owner of Page 1 Medicare, a subsidiary of Hailey-Campbell, Inc, and currently serves as the president of the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU).